Sue Penrod Jacobs passed away Saturday morning, April 9, 2016, in Tucson after a 20 year-plus hard fight with a cancer that was caused by the government’s reckless nuclear experiments, like so many White Mountain residents that were downwind of the Nevada atomic bomb tests. A special graveside service will begin at 11 a.m. on Friday, April 15, at the Pinetop Cemetery. Sue was born in McNary on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 1940. A fourth generation Arizonan, she was born the daughter of Reuben Buster “Bus: and Loyce (McGill) Penrod. She is survived by two siblings, R.B. “Sonny” Penrod, who is married to Sue Penrod, and Helen Jane Lemons, who is married to Gloyce “The Flash” Lemons. Sue was married for 40 years to Jake Jacobs and, between them, they had five children, Rob Overacker and his wife, Juie, Sidney Maddock, Joy Bancroft and her husband, Hugh, David Jacobs and his wife, Max, Elizabeth Jacobs and Larry Herring. Sue has six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, whom she dearly loved and who dearly loved her. The White Mountains had their hooks in Sue and she could never escape their grasp; truth be told, she never tried very hard. After graduating from McNary High School, Sue left the mountains for a brief period when she got her degree in Education from Mills College in the Bay Area of California. With a fresh teaching degree in hand, Sue spent the next 10 years teaching in California, New Mexico and Arizona. Drawn back to the White Mountains, Sue spent the next 25 years, with Jake, as active owners of the Molly Butler’s Lodge in Greer. After moving back to Pinetop, Sue and her sister Jane worked with their mother as co-owners of the Crown Dancer in Pinetop. Sue was a great artist, a fabulous cook and an accomplished photographer, and she would combine her love of the mountains with these talents. A great day for Sue was to be spent hiking in the woods with a camera, come back to camp and paint what she had just seen, and then cook an elk burger over the fire. Memorial contributions in her name to The Love Kitchen, P.O. Box 1373, Pinetop, Ariz., 85935 have been suggested by her family. Owens Livingston Mortuary of Show Low was in charge of the arrangements.
